A survey of underactuated mechanical systems

An underactuated mechanical system (UMS) is a system which has fewer independent control actuators than degrees of freedom to be controlled. Control of UMS is considered as one of the most active fields of research because of its diverse engineering applications. This survey reviews UMS from its history to the state-of-the-art research on modelling, classification, control, and to some extent, provides some unique insights for bottleneck issues and future research directions.